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Portugal in Context
“Where the land ends and the sea begins” was how the great poet Luís Vaz de Camões defined his homeland in the 16th century. Portugal has always been shaped by the ocean. For centuries it turned its back on its often prickly Spanish neighbors and the rest of Europe. Instead, it reached out to continents beyond the Atlantic, gaining riches though maritime trade and forging Europe’s first and longest-lasting colonial empire.
In Camões’ day, Portuguese seafarers like Vasco da Gama and Ferdinand Magellan pushed back the boundaries of the known world, discovering routes to Africa, Asia, and America, laying the foundations for a global empire. Today’s Portugal carries the legacy of that Age of Exploration, from the Brazilian gold that lines its churches to the diversity of the population, and the exotic touches that spice Portuguese cuisine.
The sea also provided an escape route. In hard times, millions of emigrants sailed for a better life, founding communities that today flourish as outposts of Portuguese culture, from Massachusetts to Macau, Paris to São Paulo.
Maritime expansion had a dark side. Portugal initiated the trans-Atlantic slave trade that lasted hundreds of years. Up to the 1970s, the dictatorship in Lisbon fought to cling to its overseas colonies. The wars left Portugal cut off from the European mainstream, economically backward, and culturally isolated. Since a peaceful 1974 revolution restored democracy, the country has taken huge strides toward modernity. Portugal joined the European Union in 1986 and adopted the euro as its currency in 1999. Today, Lisbon is fast developing as a tech hub. Tourism is booming, thanks to Portugal’s reputation as a safe, easy-on-the-wallet destination, plus the timeless advantages of living on Europe’s southwestern seaboard—from the endless sun-kissed beaches to superlative seafood and cities brimming with heritage.
Portugal Today
For much of the past 100 years, Portugal has been out of step with the European mainstream. While World War II raged, it was peacefully neutral; while post-WWII democracies embraced unity, it labored under a “proudly alone” dictatorship; while other colonial powers dismantled their empires, it waged doomed wars against African independence movements up to 1975. Now, as much of Europe is racked by political turmoil, angry demonstrations grip the streets, and voters turn to insurgent parties, this nation of 10 million is a haven of contentment and stability.
The radical right has failed to make a mark in repeated elections; the radical left, which has been a fixture for decades, seems unable to emulate the breakthroughs of comrades in Spain and Greece. From 2015 to 2019 they supported a center-left government that has given the country a balanced budget for the first time in years and ensured Portugal remains among the most enthusiastic members of NATO and the European Union. In a system where most power lies with the prime minister, but the president can impose significant checks on government policy, politicians holding both posts have managed to cooperate amiably and maintain high levels of popularity, despite coming from rival political parties: one socialist, the other conservative.
The economy helps maintain this rosy scenario. Portugal was hard hit by international economic crisis in 2009. The shock cut short the progress Portugal had been making since the 1980s when it emerged from decades of dictatorship and years of post-revolutionary turmoil. From 2009 to 2013 the economy shrank by 8%. Unemployment hit record levels. Since 2015, however, the economy has bounced back. Talented youngsters who emigrated during the lean years have been tempted home, bringing new skills and experiences that are helping renew Lisbon’s creative buzz.
Textiles, shoemaking, agriculture, and other traditional mainstays are winning markets with a new focus on high-quality production. Tourism has boomed, thanks in part to security fears in rival Mediterranean destinations. Tourism revenues doubled between 2012 and 2018 to total 16 billion€.
Lisbon and Porto have thriving tech scenes, boosted by the annual Web Summit, the world’s biggest geek gathering which moved from Dublin to the banks of the Tagus in 2015, bringing in 11,000 CEOs. Porto-based online fashion retailer Farfetch became the country’s first unicorn startup, valued at $5.8 billion at its 2018 flotation on the New York Stock Exchange. Volkswagen recently more than doubled production at its state-of-the-art plant south of Lisbon. Unemployment has halved since 2015, but many fear the recovery remains fragile given the national debt at over 120% of economic output.
It’s not just big businesses that are investing. Foreign homebuyers are fueling a real-estate boom that has brought urban renewal in downtown Lisbon and Porto, but also pushed out many local residents; vacation rentals now account for over half of housing in some historic neighborhoods.
Portugal looks toward Europe, but retains close economic, political, cultural, and personal ties with its former colonies. Brazilians make up the biggest immigrant community. Angola is a major trade partner. International networking helped Portugal’s push to have former Prime Minister António Guterres appointed secretary general of the United Nations in 2017.
The country is now firmly established as a European democracy unrecognizable from the poor, backward dictatorship of the early 1970s. Back then, under over 4 decades of authoritarian rule instituted by dictator António de Oliveira Salazar, Portuguese women were forbidden to travel without the permission of husbands or fathers, homosexuality was outlawed, and poor children left school illiterate with minimal education.
Today, women make up 35% of lawmakers (compared to 27% in Canada and 20% in the United States). Of the five main political parties, two are led by women. The mainly Roman Catholic nation legalized same-sex marriage in 2010 and gave gay couples equal adoption rights in 2016. Education is free and compulsory until the age of 18, and foreign students are flocking to its increasingly well-reputed universities.
Looking Back: History
Ancient Beginnings Legend has it Lisbon was founded by the Greek hero Ulysses, somewhat off course as he voyaged home from the Trojan War. Whether that’s true or not, what is certain is that man and beasts have lived in Portugal for several millennia. Some of Europe’s most spectacular dinosaur remains were unearthed at Lourinhã up the coast from Lisbon. Rock carvings in the Côa valley are among humanity’s oldest known art. In the Iron Age, Celtic tribes traded with visiting Mediterranean seafarers—Phoenicians, Greeks, and Carthaginians.
The Romans began muscling in around 200 b.c. as part of their struggle with Carthage for Mediterranean supremacy. They met tough resistance from the Lusitanians, a Celtic tribe whose leader, Viriato, is Portugal’s oldest national hero. As usual, the Romans won, but they named their new province Lusitania after their defeated foes. For around 600 years, they built roads and cities, kept order, and eventually introduced Christianity.
Invasions from North & South As Roman power waned, the Iberian Peninsula filled with Germanic folk. The Suevi ruled northern Portugal for 150 years. They were ousted in 588 by the Visigoths, who built a Christian kingdom covering Spain and Portugal, and made Braga a major religious center.
In 711, Islamic warriors crossed from North Africa. They took less than a decade to conquer almost the entire peninsula and would remain for more than 8 centuries. At times, Portugal formed part of powerful caliphates based in Cordoba, Seville, or Marrakesh. At others, local emirs ran independent Muslim kingdoms like those in the Algarve, Lisbon, and Mértola. Arabic influences are still felt in Portugal’s culture, cuisine, and language.
Portugal is Born In the early days, resistance to Muslim rule was led by the Kingdom of Asturias in the high mountains of northern Spain. Toward the end of the 9th century, land between the Minho and Douro rivers was reconquered and given the name Portocale after a Roman-era town close to today’s Porto.
Christian knights from across Europe traveled to join the fight. One was Henry of Burgundy, given the title Count of Portugal in 1092 by his father-in-law, one of the kings of León. When Henry died young, his son, Afonso Henriques, took the title, but since the boy was just 3 years old, his mother Teresa got to rule the country.
As he grew, Afonso became unhappy with his mother’s politics and love life, especially her cozy relations with a leading Spanish nobleman. The youngster led a rebellion by Portuguese nobles, defeated Teresa at a battle outside Guimarães, and in 1139 declared himself King Afonso I of Portugal.
Impressed by Afonso’s prowess battling the Muslims and his enthusiastic church construction program, the Pope confirmed Portugal’s status as an independent kingdom in 1179.
The Reconquista With the aid of Northern European crusaders, Afonso expanded his kingdom southward. Lisbon was reconquered after a 4-month siege in 1147. Fighting ebbed and flowed, but Afonso Henriques’ great-grandson, Afonso III, completed the Portuguese reconquista in 1249, driving the Muslims out of their last stronghold in Faro.
The danger now came from the east in the shape of the powerful Spanish kingdom of Castile. In 1385, Spanish king Juan I sent an invasion force of 30,000 to back his claim to the Portuguese throne. They were defeated at the Battle of Aljubarrota by much-outnumbered Portuguese forces in a struggle that preserved Portuguese independence and helped forge a national identity. Legend has it a woman baker joined the fray at a decisive moment, whacking several Castilian knights with heavy wooded bread trays. French cavalry backed the Spanish while English archers joined the defenders under the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1373—the world’s oldest surviving diplomatic alliance. Victorious King João I built the magnificent Gothic monastery at Batalha, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to celebrate his win.
The Age of DisCovery With its frontiers secured, Portugal started looking overseas. In 1415, João I opened the era of maritime expansion when he captured the city of Ceuta on the coast of North Africa. João’s son, Henry, fought at the battle to win Ceuta from the Moroccans. He never voyaged farther, but would change the face of world history and be forever known as Henry the Navigator.
Henry gathered sailors and scholars on the windswept southwestern tip of Europe at Sagres to brainstorm on what may lay beyond. Using new navigational technology and more maneuverable boats, the Portuguese sent out probing voyages that reached Madeira Island off the coast of Africa around 1420 and the mid-Atlantic Azores 8 years later.
A breakthrough came in 1434, when captain Gil Eanes sailed around Cape Bojador, a remote Saharan promontory that had marked the limits of European knowledge of the African coast. Eanes showed the sea beyond was not boiling and monster-filled, as was believed. The way was opened to Africa and beyond.
In the years that followed, Portuguese navigators pushed down the West African coast looking for gold, ivory, spices, and slaves. By 1482, Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo River. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed past Africa’s southern tip: He called it the Cape of Storms, but the name was quickly changed to Cape of Good Hope to encourage further voyages. That worked. Vasco da Gama traded and raided up the coast of east Africa before reaching India in 1498. World trade would never be the same. Over the next 4 decades, Portuguese explorers moved into southeast Asia, up the coast of China, and eventually into Japan. Along the way they set up trading posts and colonies. Portugal grew rich by dominating East-West exchanges and forging the first global empire. But the Portuguese also destroyed cities reluctant to submit to their power and frequently massacred civilians.
There were setbacks. In the 1480s, King João II rejected repeated requests to finance the westward exploration plans of a Genovese seafarer named Christopher Columbus, who eventually claimed the New World for his Spanish sponsors. And King Manuel I took a dislike to veteran Portuguese sea dog Fernão de Magalhães. Piqued, he crossed the border with his plans to reach Asia by sailing west and ended up leading the Spanish fleet that became the first to sail around the world. Later historians called him Ferdinand Magellan.
The Portuguese also moved west. Six years after Spain and Portugal agreed to divide up the world with the 1492 Treaty of Tordesillas, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil, which conveniently lies on the eastern Portuguese side of the dividing line.
A small arched building in the Algarve coastal town of Lagos has a grim past. It is reputed to be the site of Europe’s oldest African slave market, first used in the early 15th century. Early Portuguese settlers in Brazil began using captured natives as slaves, but as demands of sugar plantations and gold mines grew in the 17th and 18th centuries, more and more slaves were shipped from Africa. Slavery was abolished in Portugal itself in 1761, but it continued in its African colonies until 1869 and in Brazil until 1888, 66 years after the South American country’s independence. Historians estimate Portuguese vessels carried almost 6 million Africans into slavery.
Independence lost & restored In 1578, Portugal overreached. King Sebastião I, an impetuous 24-year-old, invaded Morocco. He was last seen charging into enemy lines at the disastrous Battle of Alcácer Quibir, where a large slice of the Portuguese nobility was wiped out. Sebastião had neglected to father an heir before he set off. An elderly great-uncle briefly took over, but he was a cardinal known as Henry the Chaste, so when he died in 1580, Portugal was left without a monarch. King Philip II of Spain decided he could do the job. His army marched in, crushed local resistance, seized a fortune in Lisbon, and extinguished Portuguese independence for the next 60 years.
The Iberian union made Philip ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, controlling much of the Americas, a network of colonies in Asia and Africa, and European territories that included the Netherlands and half of Italy. Spanish rule strained Portugal’s old alliance with England: The Spanish Armada sailed from Lisbon, and Sir Francis Drake raided the Portuguese coast.
By 1640, the Portuguese had had enough. While Spain was distracted fighting France in the 30 Years War, a group of nobles revolted and declared the Duke of Bragança to be King João IV. It took 28 years, but the Portuguese eventually won the War of Restoration. An obelisk in one of Lisbon’s main plazas commemorates the victory.
Meanwhile a new enemy, the Dutch, had seized some of Portugal’s overseas territories. Malacca and Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka) were lost. Faced with such threats, João IV strengthened Portugal’s British alliance by marrying his daughter Catherine of Bragança to King Charles II. Her dowry included Tangiers and Mumbai. Perhaps more significantly for the British, she introduced them to marmalade and the habit of drinking hot water flavored with a new-fangled Asian herb they called tea. In return, the British named one of their North American settlements in her honor: Queens.
Fortunately for the Portuguese, they managed to hang on to Brazil through these turbulent times. At the end of the 17th century, huge gold deposits were found inland from São Paulo. The gold rush made King João V the richest monarch in Europe. He used it to build the vast palace at Mafra and to line baroque churches up and down the country with glimmering gilt carvings.
Dateline
| 22000–10000 b.c. | Paleolithic people create some of the world’s earliest art with rock carvings of animals in the valley of the Côa River. |
| 210 b.c. | Romans begin takeover of the Iberian Peninsula. |
| 139 b.c. | Local Lusitanian tribes and their leader Viriato defeated by the Romans after 15 years of resistance. |
| 27 b.c. | Emperor Augustus creates the province of Hispania Ulterior Lusitania, comprising much of Portugal and western Spain. |
| a.d. 409 | Germanic tribes begin invasion of Roman Iberia. The Visigoths gain control of Portugal. |
| 711 | Muslim warriors arrive in Iberia, conquering Portugal within 7 years. |
| 868 | County of Portugal created in today’s Minho region by the Spanish kingdom of Asturias on land reconquered from the Muslims. |
| 1018 | Arab rulers in the Algarve declare their emirate independent of the Muslim Caliphate in southern Spain. |
| 1139 | Afonso Henriques is proclaimed the first king of Portugal after leading a rebellion against his mother and her allies in the Spanish kingdom of Leon. |
| 1147 | After a 4-month siege, Afonso I captures Lisbon from the Arabs with the aid of northern European crusaders. |
| 1249 | Afonso III completes the Reconquista, taking the Algarve from the Muslims. |
| 1290 | Portugal’s first university formed in Coimbra. |
| 1373 | Portugal signs treaty with England, forming the world’s oldest surviving diplomatic alliance. |
| 1383 | King João I defeats Castilian invaders at the Battle of Aljubarrota, securing Portugal’s independence. |
| 1415 | Henry the Navigator sets up a navigation school in Sagres. Portugal conquers Ceuta in North Africa, triggers era of overseas expansion. Madeira is discovered in 1419; the Azores in 1427. |
| 1434 | Sea captain Gil Eanes rounds Cape Bojador, opening up the coast of West Africa. |
| 1444 | Portugal initiates Atlantic slave trade when 235 African captives are landed in the Algarve. |
| 1484 | Diogo Cão explores the Congo River. |
| 1488 | Bartolomeu Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. |
| 1494 | Portugal and Spain divide up the New World with the Treaty of Tordesillas. |
| 1497 | Manuel I orders Portuguese Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave. |
| 1497–98 | Vasco da Gama’s first voyage to India, opening up East-West trade. |
| 1500 | Pedro Álvares Cabral is the first European to reach Brazil; Corte-Real brothers sail to Newfoundland. |
| 1506 | Lisbon Massacre: hundreds murdered in anti-Jewish pogrom. |
| 1510 | Afonso de Albuquerque conquers Goa, starting Portuguese colonization in India. |
| 1542 | Inquisition installed in Portugal, resulting in the execution of hundreds accused of practicing Judaism. |
| 1542 | Portuguese seafarers reach Japan. |
| 1578 | King Sebastião I killed in disastrous invasion of Morocco, leaving Portugal without an heir. |
| 1581 | Philip II of Spain proclaimed king of Portugal, ushering in 6 decades of Spanish rule. |
| 1640 | Portuguese nobles rebel, proclaim the Duke of Bragança as João IV; a 28-year war will restore independence. |
| 1661 | Princess Catarina de Bragança marries Charles II of England, gives him Mumbai and Tangiers as wedding presents, introduces the British to tea. |
| 1697 | The discovery of gold in southern Brazil makes João V Europe’s richest monarch; he builds gilded palaces, churches. |
| 1755 | Earthquake destroys Lisbon, killing up to 50,000. Prime Minister Sebastião de Melo, Marquis of Pombal, leads reconstruction efforts. |
| 1807 | Napoleon invades; British troops under Duke of Wellington will finally send him back to France in 1814. |
| 1822 | Brazil declares independence. |
| 1828–34 | War of the Two Brothers between liberal Pedro IV and conservative Miguel I leaves Portugal further weakened. |
| 1856 | First railroad opens in Portugal, but the 19th century sees economic decline and political instability. |
| 1908 | Carlos I and his son Crown Prince Luís Filipe are assassinated in Lisbon. |
| 1910 | Republican revolution overturns the monarchy. |
| 1916 | Portugal enters World War I on the Allied side. |
| 1926 | After years of political chaos, a military coup topples the Republic. |
| 1932 | António de Oliveira Salazar appointed prime minister, establishing a conservative dictatorship that will last over 4 decades. |
| 1939–45 | Portugal stays out of World War II. In France, diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes defies orders, saving thousands of Jews by issuing visas to neutral Portugal. |
| 1961 | Insurgent attacks in Angola start 14 years of colonial war in Portugal’s African empire; Indian army drives Portugal out of Goa. |
| 1974 | Almost bloodless revolution led by junior army officers topples the dictatorship. |
| 1975 | Portugal grants independence to five African colonies; brings home up to a million refugees; Indonesia invades the newly independent territory of East Timor. |
| 1976 | After a power struggle with leftist radicals, General António Ramalho Eanes is elected president, steers Portugal toward pro-Western path. |
| 1980 | Center-right Prime Minister Francisco de Sá Carneiro is killed in mysterious air crash. |
| 1986 | Portugal joins the European Union. |
| 1987 | Center-right Social Democratic Party under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva wins electoral landslide. |
| 1998 | Millions flock to Lisbon for the EXPO ’98 World’s Fair; economic growth peaks at over 7%. |
| 1999 | Portugal becomes founder member of euro currency bloc; Portugal’s last overseas territory, Macau, handed back to China after 442 years. |
| 2004 | Prime Minister José Manuel Barroso appointed President of the European Commission. |
| 2011 | Hit hard by euro-zone debt crisis, Portugal requests $86 billion IMF-EU bailout; prolonged recession, record unemployment. |
| 2014 | Banco Espírito Santo, Portugal’s second-largest bank, collapses. |
| 2015 | Left wins narrow election victory; minority Socialist government takes power under Prime Minister António Costa, on pledge to roll back austerity. |
| 2016 | Cristiano Ronaldo leads Portugal to victory in Euro 2016 soccer championship, country goes wild; former Prime Minister António Guterres appointed U.N. Secretary General; Web Summit, world’s largest tech fest, moves to Lisbon in symbol of Portugal’s economic revival. |
| 2017 | Wildfires ravage the countryside across north and central Portugal, leaving more than 100 dead. |
DISASTER & decline On All Saints’ Day in 1755, churches were packed when Lisbon was struck by a great earthquake. The tremor was followed by a tsunami and raging fire. Much of the city was destroyed and up to 50,000 people are believed to have died. Reconstruction was led by Prime Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, later Marquis of Pombal. He laid out Lisbon’s downtown, or Baixa, in the grid pattern of sturdy, four-story buildings that remains today, although the Gothic ruins of the Carmo Convent were left overlooking the city as reminder of the quake’s destructive force.
Pombal also battled to modernize the country. He curbed the powers of the Inquisition and expelled the Jesuit order. Foreign experts were brought in to expand industry and agriculture. Education and the military were reorganized.
Still, Portugal’s days as a great power were already long gone when French troops marched in as part of Napoleon’s grand design for European domination. The French met little resistance and the royal family fled to Rio de Janeiro. Harsh French rule, however, saw uprisings in Spain and Portugal. Eventually Portugal’s old ally was able to land troops in support, and after a long campaign, the Duke of Wellington led a combined British and Portuguese army that drove Napoleon’s forces back to France in 1814.
Portugal was much weakened. The decline was compounded when Brazil declared independence in 1822 and civil war broke out in the 1830s between the liberal King Pedro IV (also Emperor Pedro I of Brazil) and his conservative brother, Miguel I.
As Europe pushed ahead with industrialization in the 19th century, Portugal fell further behind, dogged by political instability and slipping into economic backwardness. Government debt mounted, pushing the state toward bankruptcy.
Unrest grew. In 1908, King Carlos I and his oldest son were assassinated in Lisbon’s Praça do Comércio. Two years later, Lisbon erupted in revolution, the monarchy was overthrown, and the last king, Manuel II, left for exile in London.
The change of regime did little to ease Portugal’s economic woes or political tensions. Over the next 16 years, there were no less than 49 governments. Portugal entered World War I in 1916 on the side of its old ally, Britain. Around 8,000 soldiers were killed fighting the Germans in France and Africa. Instability continued until a military coup in 1926 put an end to the first Republic.
Pedro & Inês: A Medieval love story
Centuries before Shakespeare gave us Romeo and Juliet, Portugal was gripped by its own tale of star-crossed lovers.
Seeking Spanish alliances, King Afonso IV in 1339 married off his son and heir, Pedro, to Constance, a Castilian princess. Nineteen-year-old Pedro promptly fell in love with one of his new wife’s ladies-in-waiting, a noblewoman named Inês de Castro. They began a very public affair and Inês bore Pedro three children.
King Afonso was outraged, frightened of offending the Castilians and worried about the influence of Inês’ ambitious brothers. He pleaded with Pedro to break it off, then banished Inês to the Santa Clara Monastery in Coimbra. When all that failed to cool Pedro’s passion, Afonso had Inês murdered. In Coimbra today, beneath the clear spring water that bubbles to the surface at the spot where she was decapitated, there’s a red rock, supposedly forever stained by her blood.
Grief-stricken, Pedro revolted against his father. He captured two of the killers and personally ripped out their hearts. Pedro became king when Afonso died in 1357 and announced that he’d secretly married Inês before her death. On the day of his coronation, Pedro ordered Inês’ corpse removed from its tomb, dressed in a regal gown, and crowned queen beside him. Portugal’s nobles lined up to kiss the hand of the woman slain 2 years before.
The story has inspired poets, painters, and musicians from Camões to Ezra Pound. Today, Pedro and Inês lie side by side in ornate tombs within the great medieval monastery at Alcobaça.
Dictatorship & Democracy The junta appointed António de Oliveira Salazar as finance minister in 1928. He became the dominant figure in Portugal’s 20th-century history, establishing a dictatorship that ruled with an iron hand for over 4 decades. Prime minister from 1932, Salazar constructed a Fascist-inspired regime, the Estado Novo, or New State. He brought some order to the economy and managed to keep Portugal neutral during World War II. Dissent was suppressed and censorship strict. A secret police force—the PIDE—spread fear; opponents were jailed or worse.
In 1961, the regime was shaken by an Indian invasion of Goa, Daman, and Diu, Portugal’s last colonies in South Asia. That same year, pro-independence forces launched attacks in Angola, starting a war across Portugal’s African empire. Salazar struck back, dispatching ever more conscripts to fight rebel movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau. Proportionally, Portugal suffered more casualties in the colonial wars than the U.S. in Vietnam. The fighting drained the economy and left Portugal internationally isolated. Hundreds of thousands of Portuguese emigrants fled poverty, oppression, and conscription, mostly to France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg.
Salazar suffered a stroke in 1968 and died 2 years later, but the regime limped on. On April 25, 1974, a group of war-weary officers staged a coup and the people of Lisbon rose up to support the troops. Flower sellers in Rossio square handed out spring blooms to the young soldiers and sailors, so the uprising was immortalized as the “Carnation Revolution.” Censorship was lifted, exiles returned, and political prisoners were released to joyous scenes.
Four Navigators Who Changed world maps
From 1415 to 1580, Portuguese explorers opened up the world for Europe, discovering new routes to Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They created a global empire and redrew world maps.
Bartolomeo Dias (ca. 1450–1500) was 38 and from a family of navigators when he led an expedition of three boats down the coast of West Africa in 1487. He failed in his mission to find the mythical Christian kingdom of Prester John, but became the first European to sail around the southern tip of Africa into the Indian Ocean. Dias was killed in a shipwreck off the Cape of Good Hope in 1500, while serving with Pedro Álvares Cabral on the expedition that reached Brazil.
Vasco da Gama (ca. 1460–1524) wasn’t the first European to explore India—wealthy Europeans had been spicing their food with its cinnamon, pepper, and nutmeg for centuries—but the trade was controlled by price-hiking Venetian, Turkish, and Arab middlemen. By discovering the sea route in 1498, da Gama opened up direct trade between Europe and Asia. His adventures are celebrated in Portugal’s national epic, Os Lusíadas, by swashbuckling 16th-century poet Luís de Camões. The two men are buried near each other in Lisbon’s Jerónimos monastery. Da Gama died of malaria in 1524 in Kochi on his third voyage to India. Western Europe’s longest bridge, an Indian seaport, and a leading Brazilian soccer club bear his name.
Brazil was first reached by accident in 1500, when the fleet of 13 ships commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral (ca. 1467–1520) sailed too far west while heading down the coast of Africa on the new route opened by da Gama. At least that’s the official story. Some believe the Portuguese already knew about Brazil but kept it quiet until they had concluded the 1492 Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain to divide the world along a line halfway between Portugal’s Cape Verde outpost and the newly discovered Spanish territories in the Caribbean. Brazil was clearly in the Portuguese sphere. Cabral didn’t stay long, but sailed on to Africa and India, becoming the first man to visit four continents. His birthplace in the pretty village of Belmonte and tomb in Santarém are much visited by Brazilian travelers.
In 1519, Fernão de Magalhães (ca. 1480–1521) was a 39-year-old veteran of the Portuguese Discoveries. He’d served 8 years in India, fighting against Turks, Arabs, and Indian states. He played a key role in the capture of Malacca, a hub for Portuguese power in southeast Asia, and was wounded at the siege of Azemmour in Morocco. Despite all this service, he managed to annoy King Manuel I. There were rumors he went AWOL, had rustled cattle, and engaged in shady deals with the Moroccans. Unable to get a ship in Lisbon, he went to Spain, where his stories of Spice Island riches convinced Emperor Charles V to send him on a mission to reach Asia by sailing west—avoiding the Portuguese-controlled eastern routes. Now known as Ferdinand Magellan, he led the fleet into the Pacific as far as the Philippines, where he was speared to death in a battle with local warriors. What was left of the expedition sailed on. Only one of the five ships made it back to Spain, the first to sail around the globe. In 2019, the 500th anniversary of his voyage was marked by a brief tiff between Portugal and Spain over which country can claim the glory of his legacy.
The revolutionaries, however, faced enormous difficulties. The wars were ended and independence hastily granted to the African colonies. Portugal then had to organize the evacuation and integration of a million refugees fleeing the new nations. Investors retreated as radical leftists ordered the nationalization of banks, industry, and farmland. For a while the country looked like it would veer toward communism.
Then, in 1976, the first presidential elections brought a moderate, General António Ramalho Eanes, to office. Socialist Party leader Mário Soares was elected prime minister the same year. Together they steered Portugal on a pro-Western course. It remained a loyal NATO ally and joined the European Union along with Spain in 1986. The previous year, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, leader of the center-right Social Democratic Party, won a landslide election on a pledge to free up the economy. The combined impact of EU membership and stable, business-friendly government led to an economic boom and rapid modernization. In 1999, Portugal handed Macau back to China, ending almost 600 years of overseas empire. Women’s rights made giant strides. The successful hosting of the EXPO ’98 World’s Fair in Lisbon symbolized Portugal’s emergence as a successful European democracy.
However, problems lay ahead. The rise of China and the EU’s inclusion of new members from Eastern Europe exposed the Portuguese economy to competition it was ill-equipped to handle. The global financial crisis of 2008 hit hard. As the economy tanked and debt soared, the government was forced in 2011 to seek a bailout from the EU and International Monetary Fund to stave off bankruptcy. In exchange for a 78€-billion rescue package, creditors demanded tough measures to bring state finances under control. The economy stabilized, but at a high cost in unemployment, cuts to public services, and increased poverty. After elections in November 2015, a new Socialist government was narrowly elected under Prime Minister António Costa, promising to ease up on austerity.
In July 2016, spirits received an enormous boost from the victory of Portugal’s national soccer team in the European championships. The first major success for a soccer-crazy nation triggered country-wide celebrations.
The last few years have seen an economic recovery fueled in a large part by tourism, which has taken off big time. An improved international financial climate has boosted exports and a thriving start-up scene has seen the emergence of strong new tech companies such as online fashion retailer Farfetch, which was valued at $5.8 billion when it was floated on the New York Stock Exchange in 2018. Symbolizing the economic comeback is the 2016 decision of Web Summit, the world’s biggest tech event to make Lisbon its home.
Clouding the upbeat feeling were the forest fires that swept across the country in 2017, killing more than 100 people and leaving the country traumatized. Despite criticism of government handling of the fires, Costa’s left-of-center government won big victories in local elections in 2017 and European Parliament elections in 2019.
Portugal’s jewish heritage
In 1497, King Manuel I, the monarch behind the golden age of Portugal’s Discoveries, married a Spanish princess, a political move designed to improve relations with the powerful neighbor. Spain’s condition: Portugal had to get rid of its thriving Jewish community, as Spain had done 5 years before. Manuel agreed, ordering all Jews to convert to Catholicism or leave. Many fled, finding refuge in the Ottoman Empire, North Africa, France, and the Netherlands, where they built Amsterdam’s splendid Portuguese Synagogue. Others stayed and became “New Christians.”
They were still not safe. In 1506, a riot over Easter led to the murder of up to 2,000 conversos in what became known as the Lisbon Massacre. Manuel I had some of the perpetrators executed, but 30 years later the state institutionalized persecution when it set up a Portuguese branch of the Inquisition, tasked with hunting down heretics—especially converts suspected of maintaining Jewish practices in secret. The Inquisition ordered almost 1,200 burned at the stake over the next 2 centuries and was only abolished in 1821. Nevertheless, some crypto-Jews managed to cling to their faith. A community in the remote village of Belmonte practiced in secret into the 1980s. There is now a small but open community there with their own rabbi.
Jews began returning to a more tolerant Portugal in the 19th century. During World War II, neutral Portugal became a haven for many fleeing the Nazis. Although dictator António Oliveira Salazar tried to prevent Jewish refugees arriving in 1940 as Hitler’s troops marched into France, the Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, Aristides de Sousa Mendes, defied orders and handed out visas, saving up to 30,000 lives. Salazar ruined his career and plunged his family into poverty, but Sousa Mendes is today regarded as a national hero.
President Mário Soares formally asked for forgiveness for past persecution in 1989. In 2015, Portugal’s parliament passed a law offering citizenship to the descendants of Jews expelled from the country. Today there are small Jewish communities, mostly in Lisbon, Porto, and Madeira Island, but recent genetic studies suggest that up to 20% of Portugal’s population may have Jewish ancestry.
Art & Architecture
From prehistoric carvings to world-class contemporary buildings, Portugal is packed with art and architecture that reflect the country’s history and unique style. A country the size of Maine, it has 14 UNESCO World Heritage Sites—four more than the entire United States.
Ancient Beginnings Discovered in the 1990s and saved from destruction during a dam-building project, the outdoor rock carvings in the Côa valley form some of humanity’s oldest art. The oldest of the enigmatic animal depictions date back to 22000 b.c. A state-of-the-art hilltop museum explains the site and arranges visits to the rocks.
Portugal is dotted with standing stones and prehistoric tombs. The most complete include the Almendres Cromlech, made up of circles of almost 100 menhirs near Évora that dates back to 6000 b.c., and the Great Dolmen of Comenda da Igreja, a Stone-Age burial site outside Montemor-o-Novo.
Northern Portugal contains some of Europe’s best-preserved remains of fortified hilltop villages built by ancient Celts. Those of Citânia de Briteiros near Guimarães and Monte Mozinho close to Penafiel are well worth a visit.
From Roman to Romanesque During 600 years of occupation, the Romans built cities, roads, and villas across the country. To get an idea of life in Roman Portugal, visit Conímbriga, 16km (10 miles) south of Coimbra, where the remains of a complete settlement have been excavated complete with baths, forum, theater, and mosaic-decorated private homes. Other Roman monuments include the 1st-century Temple de Diana in Évora, a bridge constructed during the reign of Emperor Trajan that’s still used in Chaves, and the well-preserved remains of ancient Coimbra beneath the Museu Machado de Castro.
Few physical traces remain of the Germanic peoples who flowed in after the Romans, although the Chapel of São Frutuoso in Braga is of Visigoth origin. The pretty town of Mertola in the Alentejo region was briefly the capital of an Arab kingdom. Its mosque was converted into the parish church but still offers the best example of Islamic architecture in Portugal. Several medieval castles also bear witness to Portugal’s Muslim past, notably that in Silves and the hilltop Castelo dos Mouros in Sintra.
As the reconquista gathered pace in the 10th century, churches in the European Romanesque style sprang up across northern Portugal. The cathedrals of Braga and Lisbon date from this time, but Sé Velha in Coimbra is where the Romanesque style is at its purest, with fewer later additions. The Rates Monastery near Póvoa de Varzim is one of the oldest Romanesque buildings. Others can be discovered along the Romanesque Route (Rota do Românico) linking over 50 churches and other monuments in the hills east of Porto. The granite Domus Municipalis (municipal house) in Bragança is a rare example of civic architecture to survive from the period.
Portugal’s most remarkable Romanesque building forms the core of the Convent of Christ in Tomar. The circular 12th-century church was built by the Knights Templar who had their base here. They copied it from the ancient churches in Jerusalem that the knights had visited during the Crusades. The whole magnificent complex, which includes later medieval and Renaissance additions, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
The Gothic Era The history of the Gothic style in Portugal is bookended by two fabulous monasteries, built just 25km (14 miles) apart. Alcobaça Monastery was built in the 12th century, its white stone arches following the pure, unadorned style imported from France by the Cistercian order of monks. Although the church’s exterior was significantly modified in the baroque era, the interior remains a hugely atmospheric medieval monument. Constructed 2 centuries later to celebrate a famous victory over invading Spaniards, Batalha Monastery is a flamboyant example of the ornate late Gothic style, bristling with statues, spires, and richly decorated arches. Lit by the setting sun, its limestone facade glows golden. Both monasteries are now UNESCO Sites.
Between these two masterpieces, major Gothic churches were built all around the country; the Church of São Francisco in Porto, Évora Cathedral, and the ruined Carmo convent in Lisbon are among the best. However, Santarém, high on the north bank of the Tagus River, holds the title “capital of Gothic,” thanks to the sheer number of medieval churches there.
Portugal’s Unique Manueline Style Named for King Manuel I, the monarch behind Portugal’s Era of Discoveries, the Manueline style is unique to Portugal. It combines elements of medieval Gothic and the new ideas of the Renaissance, but adds elements inspired by Portugal’s adventures on the high seas. Maritime motives become an integral part of the architecture—shells, ropes, branches of coral, and navigational instruments, as well as exotic touches brought back from distant lands.
Best-known among the Manueline monuments are the iconic Torre de Belém fortress guarding the Tagus River in Lisbon’s Belém neighborhood and the neighboring Jerónimos Monastery, a spectacular building containing the tombs of explorer Vasco da Gama, poets Luís de Camões and Fernando Pessoa, as well as King Manuel himself.
Other fine examples of the Manueline style can be found in Tomar’s Convent of Christ, the Royal Palace in Sintra, and the Monastery of Jesus in Setúbal.
The Discoveries period also saw a flowering of Portuguese painting. The country’s most cherished artwork is Nuno Gonçalves’ giant Panels of Saint Vincent, which contains portraits of 60 people, a cross-section of 15th-century society, from nobility (including Henry the Navigator) to friars and fishermen. It alone justifies a visit to Lisbon’s Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga.
Another renowned painter of the Discoveries period is Grão Vasco, best known for his sumptuous religious works. Many are displayed in the excellent Grão Vasco museum in his hometown of Viseu.
Baroque GOLD The drama and exuberance of the baroque style were embraced across the Catholic world in response to austere Protestant values. Nowhere was this truer than in Portugal and its empire, where the wealth pouring in from Brazilian gold fields in the 17th and 18th centuries fueled a spending spree on ornate churches and palaces.
Two specifically Portuguese art forms thrived in this period: talha dourada (wood carving gilded with gold leaf), and the glazed ceramic tiles known as azulejos. The combination of the intricately carved altars gleaming with gold and the soft blue-and-white tiles make church interiors of this period uniquely beautiful. Wonderful examples can be found in the São Roque church in Lisbon, the church of Santa Clara in Porto, or the tiny church of São Lourenço de Almancil in the Algarve. Elsewhere, baroque architects demand an upward gaze: The 75-meter (246-ft.) tower of the Clérigos church is a symbol of the city of Porto, while Braga and Lamego both have hilltop churches reached by monumental stairways.
A rich handicraft tradition
Aside from high art, Portugal retains a wealth of regional handicraft traditions. The small town of Arraiolos in the Alentejo is famed for carpets, woven from local wool into designs that reflect the flowers of the region. Hand-painted pottery from Coimbra is refined and colorful, based on designs from the 15th and 16th centuries. Artists around Barcelos in the Minho have always produced ceramic figures: demons, saints, and the rooster, which has become a national symbol. Delicate golden filigree jewelry is a specialty of Viana do Castelo, while Castelo Branco is famed for silk embroidery and Madeira for lacework. Many countries produce decorated ceramic tiles, but in few places are they so central to the folk-art tradition as azulejos are to Portugal. They appear on buildings ranging from ancient churches to brand-new subway stations. Even the sidewalks can be works of art. The calçada portuguesa technique uses small cubes of white and black limestone to make patterned pavements that are found around Lisbon and other Portuguese cities—Rossio square in the heart of the capital is one fine example.
Secular art also thrived in the baroque era, including the Queluz Royal Palace, the Palácio de Mateus vila near Vila Real, and the splendid Joanina Library in Coimbra University. Putting all the others into shade, however, is the enormous Mafra Palace, built by King João V, north of Lisbon. It covers an area larger than seven football fields, filled with sumptuous ballrooms, churches, a hospital, and a library lined with 36,000 volumes. The 4 decades of construction feature prominently in Baltasar and Blimunda, one of the best novels by Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago.
Portugal’s greatest sculptor emerged during this period—Joaquim Machado de Castro (1731–1822), whose works grace many churches and plazas, including the statue of King Jose I on horseback in the center of Lisbon’s Praça do Comércio.
RECONSTRUcTION & ROMANCE After the excesses of the baroque era, the Marquis of Pombal imposed his sober-minded architectural vision after the great earthquake of 1755. The prime minister ordered the rebuilding of Lisbon’s Baixa district in an orderly grid pattern of solid, unadorned blocks. In the Algarve, an entire town, Vila Real de Santo António, was laid out in this Pombaline style.
Architecture in the 19th century looked backward. Ancient Athens inspired neoclassical buildings like Lisbon’s Dona Maria National Theater or the São Bento palace, which houses the parliament. Other styles looked closer to home. The sumptuous Arab Room in Porto’s Stock Exchange is a gilded Moorish fantasy. Nostalgia for the Age of Discovery saw the development of a neo-Manueline fashion represented by Lisbon’s Rossio station, or the delightfully romantic Buçaco Palace, a royal residence that’s now a luxury hotel surrounded by lush forest. The Romantic movement in Portuguese architecture reached its peak with the completion in 1854 of the mountaintop Pena Palace in Sintra, a multicolored potpourri of styles devised by Ferdinand, the German prince married to Queen Maria II.
Portuguese Art’s armenian connection
Lisbon’s art scene owes an inestimable debt to an Armenian-born philanthropist named Calouste Gulbenkian. One of the first to appreciate the potential of Middle East oil, Gulbenkian amassed a fortune in the early 20th century.
He settled in neutral Lisbon in 1942 to escape WWII. When he died 13 years later, Gulbenkian thanked his adopted homeland by leaving much of his wealth to a foundation to promote culture, education, and science. Located in a one of Lisbon’s loveliest gardens, the Gulbenkian Foundation remains a driving force behind the arts. Its concert halls offer some of the city’s best classical, jazz, and world music.
The Gulbenkian Museum is a must-see attraction housing the tycoon’s wonderfully diverse collection—from ancient Egyptian statuary to French Impressionist masterpieces, fine Ming vases to exquisite Persian rugs. Its collection of Fabergé jewelry is dazzling. The modern art museum at the Gulbenkian showcases Portuguese and international works from the 20th and 21st centuries.
Industrialization was slow coming to Portugal, but building the railroads created a network of stations decorated with exquisitely painted azulejo tiles. The stations in Aveiro, the Douro wine town of Pinhão, and São Bento in Porto are among the prettiest. The railway also graced Porto with a magnificent iron bridge over the Douro. The Maria Pia Bridge (p. 347) was built in 1877 by a French engineer named Gustave Eiffel, who went on to build a certain tower in Paris. At the time, it was the world’s longest single-arch bridge. Nine years later, a colleague of Eiffel’s built an even longer span just next door: the double-decker Dom Luís I Bridge. Portugal’s other great iron structure of the Industrial Age is the Santa Justa Elevator, a startling 13-meter (43-ft.) tower that offers vertical transportation between Lisbon’s downtown and the chic shops of the Chiado district.
Despite political turmoil and economic decline, the arts flourished in the 19th century. Talented naturalist painters included José Malhoa (1855–1933), best known for his depictions of fado singers and boozers in Lisbon taverns, and Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro (1856–1929), arguably Portugal’s greatest painter, whose impressionistic portraits captured intellectual life in the capital. Columbano’s dandyish brother, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro (1846–1905), a sculptor, created fantastical ceramic works that range from plates and bowls decorated with animal and plant motifs to comic figurines caricaturing figures of the day. His works remain hugely popular and are still produced in the factory he built in Caldas da Rainha.
20th Century The most influential figure in Portuguese modern art was Amadeo de Souza Cardoso (1887–1918), a daring figure who painted bold, bright canvases, flirting with cubism, futurism, and abstraction. Souza Cardoso was cut down young by the Spanish flu epidemic, but international interest in his work was revived in 2016 by a major exhibition in Paris.
Other 20th-century giants in Portuguese art include José de Almada Negreiros (1889–1970), a non-conformist much influenced by the Italian futurist movement; and Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908–92), who worked mostly in Paris. She was the first woman to be awarded France’s Grand Prix National des Arts. Her abstract works recall Portuguese azulejos, endless libraries, and the winding alleys of Lisbon.
During the early years of the Salazar dictatorship, architecture was much influenced by the grandiose ideas emanating from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, although softened by a Portuguese touch recalling the country’s medieval or maritime past. Modern extensions to Coimbra University, the Monument to the Discoveries jutting into the river at Belém, and the Praça Francisco Sá Carneiro in Lisbon showcase the Estado Novo style.
Later, the Porto School of Architecture produced a crop of designers whose cool, modernist buildings have won worldwide acclaim. Álvaro Siza Vieira (b. 1933) is the best known. His clean white cubic buildings grace cities around the world. Work started on the 85-year-old’s first New York City skyscraper in 2019. In Portugal, his landmark buildings include the Serralves contemporary art museum in Porto and the Portuguese Pavilion in Lisbon’s Parque das Nações district. Eduardo Souto de Moura (b. 1952) is a fellow winner of the Pritzker Prize, considered architecture’s “Nobel.” The soccer stadium in Braga carved into the rock walls of a quarry is among his most distinctive works.
Contrasting with the geometric purity favored by the Porto School, Lisbon architect Tomás Taveira (b. 1938) made an eye-catching contribution to the capital’s skyline in the early 1980s with his giant Amoreiras shopping and residential center, whose oddly shaped towers in pink, black, and silver are monuments to then-trendy postmodern style.
Art Today The arts scene today is thriving. Contemporary works are showcased in important new galleries like the Berardo Museum (see p. 110) in Lisbon’s Belém district, the Serralves (p. 343) center in Porto, and the MAAT museum (p. 107) that opened in the fall of 2016.
Joana Vasconcelos (b. 1971) is perhaps the contemporary artist who has gained most international recognition, after three appearances at the Venice Biennale. She uses colorful textiles, crochet, and lacework to cover and distort familiar Portuguese objects, from ceramic shellfish to a Tagus riverboat.
Paula Rego (b. 1935) divides her time between London and Cascais, where there’s a museum designed by Souto de Moura is dedicated to her work. Her paintings often reflect a sinister, fairytale world populated by powerful, muscular women.
Lately, Lisbon has gained a reputation as a center of graffiti art, including towering works covering abandoned apartment blocks that greet visitors on the way into town along Avenida Fontes Pereira de Melo. Vhils (b. 1983) is Portugal’s most renowned urban artist. His haunting portraits carved into the side of buildings have sprung up around the world from San Diego to Sydney, Beijing to Bogota, as well as locations around Lisbon.
Books
The ideal literary companion to a visit to Portugal is a guide by the country’s only Nobel Prize in Literature winner, José Saramago. In 1979, Saramago set out on a meandering drive from north to south seeking the soul of his homeland’s history and culture. His Journey to Portugal is an intimate, highly personal portrait that reaches into the lives of the Portuguese people.
For an up-to-date survey, The Portuguese: A Modern History by the Associated Press Lisbon correspondent Barry Hatton looks at how history has shaped today’s Portugal. The country’s love of soccer, the significance of fado, and the importance of good eating are all included in this excellent introduction.
History
Before his death in 2012 at the age of 92, José Hermano Saraiva was Portugal’s best-known historian, a familiar face to millions thanks to his TV series on the country’s past. Saraiva’s Portugal: A Companion History provides a sweeping saga of the land you’re about to visit.
A Concise History of Portugal by David Birmingham is a readable, short overview, while Malyn Newitt’s Portugal in European and World History puts the story in the wider international context. Hatton’s latest book Queen of the Sea is a highly readable history of Lisbon, packed with intriguing details, from the career of the black matador who wowed the bullrings of Spain, to the cavorting of the kings who kept harems in a Lisbon convent.
A wide range of books focuses on Portugal’s Age of Discovery. Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley is a rip-roaring account of Portugal’s expansion into the Indian Ocean, which isn’t shy in portraying the brutality of the early colonial enterprise. Indian historian Sanjay Subrahmanyam’s The Portuguese Empire in Asia presents an epic alternative to Eurocentric views of the Discoveries.
For gripping accounts of great voyages, try The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco Da Gama by Nigel Cliff, or Over the Edge of the World: Magellan’s Terrifying Circumnavigation of the World by Laurence Bergreen.
Portuguese Literature
The earliest poems in the Portuguese language emerged from the troubadours of the old kingdom of Galicia, one of the Christian states fighting Muslim rule in the Iberian Peninsula. The written language was refined in the Middle Ages by the chroniclers of the royal reigns. The first great Portuguese literature emerged in the 15th century, by playwright Gil Vicente, whose works range from moral tales with a maritime theme to bawdy comedies.
Born in 1524, Luís de Camões is the towering figure in Portuguese letters and considered one of the greats of world literature, up there with Shakespeare, Dante, and Cervantes. His epic poem Os Lusíadas is a heroic retelling of the voyages of discovery. A swashbuckling one-eyed veteran of Portugal’s overseas adventures, Camões is a national hero whose death is commemorated on June 10 as the national holiday.
Five Essential portuguese reads
Five of the best by Portuguese authors:
The Crime of Father Amaro by José Maria de Eça de Queirós: Written in 1875, this tale of forbidden passion between a young priest and an innocent girl in the provincial city of Leiria still has the power to shock.
The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis by José Saramago: This deeply atmospheric book set in dictatorship Lisbon during the 1930s evokes the mysterious world of poet Fernando Pessoa.
Os Lusíadas by Luís de Camões: Portugal’s national epic was written in 1572 by the seafaring poet whose statue stares down on Lisbon’s Chiado district. Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, Camões tells a heroic tale of Portugal’s voyages of discovery through the eyes of Vasco da Gama, embellished by encounters with giants, seductive nymphs, and Greek gods.
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa: This posthumously published literary oddity has become a cult favorite. A meandering reflection on life and Lisbon, it is at turns funny and sad. It was chosen as one of the 100 greatest books ever in a survey of world authors.
The Return by Dulce Maria Cardoso: Set in 1975, this novel by one of Portugal’s best current writers tells of the trauma of the retornados, the up to one million Portuguese who fled Angola and other newly independent African nations at the end of Portugal’s colonial wars. It was a 2016 PEN Award winner for translated books.
The Portuguese novel came of age in the 19th century, and the greatest author of the age was José Maria de Eça de Queirós. A diplomat, his novels about Portuguese society blend biting satire with often dark tragedy dealing with controversial themes like incest, adultery, and clerical abuse. The Maias and The Crime of Father Amaro are his most powerful novels.
Poet Fernando Pessoa is a unique figure. Considered a founder of modernist literature, his writings are mystical and deeply philosophical, but struck a chord with his compatriots, who rate him second only to Camões among their literary greats. A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe: Selected Poems gives a selection of his works translated into English.
Among modern writers, José Saramago stands out as the Portuguese language’s only winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature. A lifelong Communist who had a sometimes testy relationship with the authorities, he is widely revered. When he died in 2010, 20,000 attended his funeral. Saramago’s novels like The Elephant’s Journey and Baltasar and Blimunda delve into Portuguese history. Blindness and The Double are dark parables of modern life.
Successful contemporary works available in English include David Machado’s The Shelf Life of Happiness, a heartwarming tale set in the recession-hit 2000s; What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire? by veteran intellectual António Lobo Antunes; and In Your Hands, a saga covering the lives of three generations of Portuguese women by Inês Pedrosa.
Foreign Fiction Set in Portugal
Lisbon’s curious position in World War II as a neutral port filled with refugees and spies has inspired many novels. The best is The Night in Lisbon by the German anti-Nazi writer Erich Maria Remarque, who was himself a refugee. Estoril by Dejan Tiago-Stankovic is set in the same period and tells the story of a Serbian spy believed to be the real-life model for James Bond.
Italian author Antonio Tabucchi, a frequent Nobel Prize contender, had a long love affair with Portugal. His novel Pereira Declares is a story of intrigue set in 1930s Lisbon. Another classic with a Lisbon setting is Confessions of Felix Krull, about a visiting con artist by German Nobel-winner Thomas Mann, who unfortunately died before writing the ending.
Recent books include Alentejo Blue, a series of tales set in the rural south by award-winning British writer Monica Ali; The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon, a best-seller by Richard Zimmer focusing on a Jewish family during the persecutions of the 16th century; and Like a Fading Shadow, a fictionalized account of James Earl Ray’s attempt to hide from American justice in Lisbon after the murder of Martin Luther King, written by Spanish novelist Antonio Muñoz Molina.
Food & Drink
The recent international discovery of Portugal’s healthy and delicious cuisine has triggered a sudden blooming of cookbooks and food guides. Manhattan-based culinary superstar George Mendes has penned a mouthwateringly beautiful tribute to the cooking of his homeland in My Portugal. His near namesake Nuno Mendes—a giant in London’s restaurant scene—has produced a recipe-packed homage to his hometown in My Lisbon. Food of Portugal by Jean Anderson is an excellent introduction for anybody wanting to cook up a taste of the country, while Maria de Lourdes Modesto’s encyclopedic Traditional Portuguese Cooking is a sacred text in many Portuguese kitchens.
Combining recipes with travelogue are Eat Portugal by Célia Pedroso and Lucy Pepper, and The Portuguese Travel Cookbook by food blogger Nelson Cavalheiro.
For the secrets of Portugal’s most complex tipples, try Richard Mayson’s Port and the Douro, and Madeira: The Mid-Atlantic Wine by Alex Liddell.
Music
Portugal’s most distinctive music is fado, the urban blues of Lisbon that comes close to encapsulating the nation’s soul. Fado traditionally involves a singer, male or female, accompanied by two guitarists, one playing the familiar classical guitar, called a viola in Portuguese, the other plucking the unique, tear-shaped guitarra Portuguesa. With 12 steel strings, the Portuguese guitar can, in the right hands, produce an amazing range of sound.
The word “fado” means “fate.” Although not all fado songs are melancholic, the music is deeply associated with saudade, an untranslatable word that implies longing for lost loves and distant homelands. It is a sentiment ingrained in the national character since the days when long sea voyages and successive waves of emigration carried the Portuguese to the far corners of the globe.
Fado has its roots in the bars and bordellos of Lisbon’s docklands and the tightly packed old neighborhoods of Alfama and Mouraria. Maria Severa, the earliest fado great, was a renowned lady of the night in early-19th-century Lisbon. The music’s disreputable origins are summed up in the painting O Fado by José Malhoa, on show in Lisbon’s Fado Museum.
Early in the 20th century, fado went mainstream. Although some maintained a bohemian edge, fado singers moved from backstreet bars to boulevard theaters, radio studios, and movie sets. Many casas de fado—fado houses—became chic restaurants. The Salazar dictatorship sought to sanitize fado, censoring lyrics and seeking to promote conservative values though the music.
Towering above all this was Amália Rodrigues, fado’s biggest name. From a poor background, she began singing as a teenager in the 1930s and became fado’s first global star. She sang lyrics penned by the nation’s greatest poets and popularized the song “April in Portugal,” later covered by the likes of Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, and Eartha Kitt.
Boosted by radio, cinema, and later TV, fado singers became household names. When Amália died in 1999, the government declared 3 days of national mourning. The crowds who packed Lisbon streets for her funeral were calculated in the
hundreds of thousands. The emotion shown for the diva’s passing sparked a revival of interest in fado and thrust a new generation of singers into the limelight.
Young singers like Mariza, Camané, and Ana Moura—who has sung with the Rolling Stones—have gone on to international success. Suddenly fado is sexy again. Alongside the posh, sometimes stuffy fado houses, new hip venues have sprung up. Uninhibited new stars are experimenting, adding piano, bass, and saxophone to the traditional guitars, blending elements of jazz, tango, and bossa nova. Current sensations include Carminho, Aldina Duarte, Raquel Tavares, and the exuberant Gisela João, hailed by some as the best voice since Amália.
The university city of Coimbra (see p. 294) has its own distinctive form of fado. There, it’s traditionally sung only by men, and the songs tend to have a lighter, more romantic feel, dating back to the days when lovesick students would sing nocturnal serenades beneath the windows of their latest flames.
A number of Portuguese pop bands have used fado and other folk elements to create a modern sound rooted in tradition. The most successful was Madredeus, whose haunting sound has won them an international following.
Portugal’s musical traditions go way beyond fado. From the powerful male-voice choirs formed by miners and farm workers in the southern Alentejo to the Celtic-tinged bagpipe music of the north, each region has a distinctive sound.
Singer-songwriters rooted in the folk tradition, but also taking in outside influences from French chanson to American protest songs, evolved in the 1960s and 1970s to produce a highly politicized sound in opposition to the long dictatorship. The major figure was José “Zeca” Afonso, whose songs range from biting political satire to lyrical evocations of the Portuguese countryside. When revolutionary soldiers seized the state radio station in the early hours of April 25, 1974, they played his banned song “Grândola, Vila Morena” over the airways as a signal to comrades to move to the next phase of the uprising that restored democracy. Zeca died in 1987, but other veterans of that era, like Sérgio Godinho, Vitorino, and Júlio Pereira, remain popular performers.
Portuguese jazz has its spiritual home in Lisbon’s Hot Club de Portugal, an archetypal basement dive that’s been bopping since the 1940s. Portuguese jazz musicians who have made international splashes include vocalist Maria João and pianist Mário Laginha. In 2017, jazz singer Salvador Sobral became a national hero when he became Portugal’s first winner of the Eurovision Song Festival, crooning a soulful ballad in complete contrast to the event’s usual kitsch offerings.
Portugal’s close ties with its former colonies mean that Lisbon nights echo with the sounds of Brazilian samba, Cape Verdean mornas, and Angola’s sensual kizomba music. The riverside B.Leza club is a legendary venue for live African music. Over the past decade, Buraka Som Sistema, a group from Lisbon’s northern suburbs, has found international success with its blend of techno beats and Angolan rhythms.
For classical music, the Lisbon-based Gulbenkian Orchestra is tops. In the north, Porto’s Casa da Música is a major venue. Lisbon’s gilded 18th-century São Carlos theater is the premier opera venue, while the modern Teatro Camões is home to the prestigious National Ballet Company.
A final word should go to pimba, a style scorned by city cool kids but wildly popular at rural festivals. It’s strangely similar to Germany’s Schlager music, involving singers belting out saucily suggestive up-tempo dance numbers backed by electric organ, guitar, and accordion. Performers tend to be curvaceous blondes or middle-aged guys flanked by scantily clad dancing girls.
Film
The good news for film fans heading to Portugal is that theaters there run movies in the original language with subtitles, rather than dubbing them. That means English-speakers are free to enjoy the latest Anglophone flicks in a mega-mall multiplex, in Lisbon’s cool Cinemateca movie museum, or in the capital’s few intimate arthouse theaters.
Portugal’s own movie industry was long dominated by one man, Manoel de Oliveira, who died in 2015 at the age of 106 as the world’s oldest working director. Oliveira’s often slow-moving and melancholic adaptations of literary works were loved by critics, less so by mass audiences. The most accessible of his movies is his first, Aniki-Bóbó, a tale of street urchins in 1940s Porto.
Two of the best recent films that have been hits with both critics and audiences have been Os Maias, João Botelho’s adaptation of the great 19th-century novel, and The Gilded Cage, a heartwarming comedy about Portuguese emigrants in Paris, by the promising young actor/director Ruben Alves.
